Rainbow
They try to tell you
it's somewhere over
never under
It’s either
in or out
good or bad
never or always
A difficult concept
for me to sometimes grasp
I suspended in wonder
a dreamer
who blurs the fine line
between
this and that
who wears a thin veil
both
night and day
Winter and Spring
living and dying
who likes to glimpse
a bit of Heaven
on every horizon
With my feet
on the ground
my roots in the sky
I am
both floating and sinking
sleeping and waking
I am
all the tones
the varied hues
every nuance
of the moving landscape
My own poems
a wasteland of words
wandering whole sentences
and paragraphs
the mouth of my river
opening wide
Like
the arc
the helix
the spiral staircase
both ascending and descending
I am that mysterious longing
for that indefinable somewhere
a bridge to other worlds
Every day
I wait for the sun
to drown in my reflection
Every day
I offer myself to the Mirror--
the iridescence of my being
my grey clouded emotions
surrendering to the unknown
Every day
the miracle within
passes through me like rain
gives birth to creation
Offers my eyes --
these dry empty sockets
these weeping wounds
a reason
to burst
into light
Becoming
for Mia Funk
What can I tell my eyes
that they don’t already know?
Eyes
these dark seeds
that wait in darkness
eyes
that carry their own light
within
eyes that blossom into flower
each and every morning
My words too
sealed on my lips
find their way back
in the dark
find their way back
like roots
like truth
like the unwanted the forgotten
like all things
that were once buried
Each thought is a promise
you plant in your mind
Each breath is sown
both within
and without
All of creation
hums in the dark
breathing the Divine
through invisible layers
What We Gather
Taking nothing with you
leaving nothing behind
I find only your scent
Floating unbounded
without your breath of spirit
to hold its bouquet --
it passes through me now
while still it lingers
Holding on while letting go
is never easy
Holding on while letting go
is breathing out while breathing in
is water slipping through fingers
is loving with your eyes wide shut
and your heart slit open
Flowers
cut down in their prime
lose the earth
only to return to it once more
while women with parched lips
still chant the names of rivers
and other beds gone dry.
Every day
I gather at the river
river of tears
river of refuse
river of dreams
Every day
I kneel in the banks of my memory
making large withdrawals
from smaller deposits
of dwindling return
Today
the darkness flows within me
and without me
Tomorrow
I will gather and be gathered
Each experience
but yet another flower
for the vase
Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary James Meary Tambimuttu of Poetry London–-publisher of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan, to name a few. After his death, it was his friend, the late great Kathleen Raine, who took an interest in her writing and encouraged her to publish.
A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, she is widely published. She has been a featured guest at Shakespeare & Company, on a number of occasions, as well as performed or read in other literary venues in the City of Light and elsewhere. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France), Jazz and Literature and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
She is the recipient of two grants: one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Joseph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Poet in Residence. She is also Writer/Poet in Residence at The Creative Process. Her selected poems On the Way to Invisible was recently published by The Opiate Books and is now available.
No comments:
Post a Comment